Comment: Andrew Sullivan: Bush can still pull off a Reagan triumph

[emad]

Sunday Times
We should know him by now, shouldn’t we? This week George W Bush will be inaugurated for a second term as president, but the occasion, far from being an unqualified triumph, will be a reflection of the American public’s ambivalence towards the man and his record. Bush’s re-election margin, remember, was 3%. Ronald Reagan’s was 18%. Bill Clinton’s was a solid 8%.

Yes, the Republicans eked out stronger majorities in House and Senate but only by increments. The president’s approval ratings are still below 50%, rare for a re-elected president. The public is increasingly sceptical of his signature foreign policy initiative, the war in Iraq. His second-term domestic agenda — social security, meaning pension privatisation — has a long way to go before it wins congressional backing.

To his supporters Bush is a “transformational” president. They believe he is the architect of a domestic political realignment, making the Republicans the natural party of government for a generation. He is the spear-point of a spiritual reawakening in which the fusion of evangelical Christianity and political activism will make America even more exceptional in the western world.

They hope that he will lead to the banning of abortion and legal protection for gay relationships, the decline of divorce and the resurgence of candid religious symbolism in the public square. In foreign affairs they see him moving the United States away from subservience to the United Nations and towards a democratic revolution in the Middle East. It may be hard to find a handful of writers on the East Coast who accept his bona fides, but in the heartland, his sentiments and his powerful personal connection still endure.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-1442182,00.html

[PROGRESSIVE1]

1. Sully, being the mediawhore that he is, is still hoping for....

a victorious Bush. Sully = Crap

[The Backlash Cometh]

2. Okay, I'm going to say it. It's nasty and it's mean, but I'm going to say

it:

Can someone please pay for Andrew Sullivan's HIV Cocktails so that man can stop whoring for the right!

[PROGRESSIVE1]

3. kick

[Zeke]

4. Yea, Verily...

David BRock chronicled in "Blinded by the Right"
just how many gays work in right wing media spinning
for causes and people diametrically opposite of their
personal lives and interests. They must hate themselves.

[dannynyc]

5. I wonder if the HIV cocktails

affect his brain function. When you read the stuff he writes he seems to constantly contradict himself. I never know which direction he's coming from. But, he does have the ability to put on the blinders whenever reality contradicts his position of the day . . . hour . . . minute.

[The Backlash Cometh]

6. I stopped reading him years ago. But, I wouldn't be surprised if there

were contradictions. He definitely talks like a man who is up for sale and I'm being kind by wondering if it's his medical condition that keeps him spewing illogical spin that always seems to support the right.

No one can be that horrible without a mitigating circumstance.

[Demeter]

7. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

A Reagan triumph! A REAGAN TRIUMPH! The only thing Bush has accomplished is making Reagan look not so bad.

[No Exit]

8. Mr. Sullivan, how often do you visit the "heartland"?

THIS "heartlander" is beyond disgust at the repulsive travesty that is George W. Bush. This "heartlander" finds his "presidency" to be an obscenity.